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Matthias wrote: the part you dislike is even further minimized, if not entirely eradicated altogether.

I'm not sure I'm opposed to best general being comp+battle (Assuming the comp is a well done pre-known WPS style scoring, not a subjective rating by judges or opponents).

I'm just pointing out relevant facts and experiences that counter a point someone made




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Kilkrazy wrote:
That isn't what I said though.

Judges can sway games in favour of one side or another without changing the rules. This is not obvious cheating and can be hard to prove. It is the same situation as applies to soft scoring.

Bias in soft scores is entirely different animal than TO's cheating to favor or disfavor a certain player. The TO's cheating will have an equal (well, probably greater as a good player can still win with the TO trying to screw him...I know I have...) effect on the soft scores too.

Bias in soft scoring (especially if some people know the bias and others don't) is more of a problem and you can't do anything to try to compensate for it...It is entirely out of your control, unlike a bad matchup (I've won those by outplaying the other person). Entirely different circumstances.

It isn't different. The judge is either biased in favour of a local player, or he isn't. If he is biased in favour of green armies, everyone is subject equally to the bias.

Apples and Oranges...You're talking about intentionally stacking the deck for or against a certain player...Basically cheating. That would happen with the soft scores too, so is not relevant in the hard scores vs soft scores debate.

No more than bribing your opponent (Or collusion) to get a better sports score or using loaded dice in battle.

And no, not everyone is subject equally to ANY bias...Thus it being a bias.

It seems to me that you do not understand what I am saying.

If a judge is biased in favour of a local player, his bias has the potential to affect the scores he gives for or against that player. That is clear discrimination against non-local players, which means the playing field is not level for all.

If a judge is biased in favour of green armies, his bias affects all the entrants equally, because anyone can make a green army. So the playing field is level.

Kilkrazy wrote:It seems to me that you do not understand what I am saying.

If a judge is biased in favour of a local player, his bias has the potential to affect the scores he gives for or against that player. That is clear discrimination against non-local players, which means the playing field is not level for all.

If a judge is biased in favour of green armies, his bias affects all the entrants equally, because anyone can make a green army. So the playing field is level.

Except that the local players probably know about the TO's bias towards Green armies, and will therefore be more likely to bring a Green army to the Tournament.

They probably also know that judge A always has a hangover on the morning of the competition and makes bad decisions.

Consequently they call Judge A when they want a ruling on an opponent's move, and a different judge to rule on their own move, because both decisions are more likely to favour them.

Kilkrazy wrote:It seems to me that you do not understand what I am saying.

If a judge is biased in favour of a local player, his bias has the potential to affect the scores he gives for or against that player. That is clear discrimination against non-local players, which means the playing field is not level for all.

If a judge is biased in favour of green armies, his bias affects all the entrants equally, because anyone can make a green army. So the playing field is level.

No, not everyone can make a green army...That is not level at all.

Inquisitor_Malice wrote:
The only difference is that there is "also" an Overall Champion that combines all categories.

What if you just change "Overall" to something like "Combined" or Hobby". In terms of how it's calculated it's identical, but it drops some of the implied hierarchy that I think is causing some angst - Overall > everything else.

Overall is descriptive. The person has the best aggregate score across all categories.

Is Best General not adequately descriptive?

Mannahnin wrote:Overall is descriptive. The person has the best aggregate score across all categories.
Is Best General not adequately descriptive?

I think that both titles are adequately descriptive. But when used in the same context (like on a list of champions for a tournament), the term Overall implies superiority - the Champion over all of the others. Is that intentional, or are all of the top champions equal?

IMO the tabletop wargaming hobby is not purely about winning games. You can do that in anything. It is about playing games in an aesthetic environment of nice terrain and models.

That's my perspective. Some people would say it is elitist and exclusionary.

I typically hand out the title Warmaster to the person who wins hte best general award at my GTs. I think it sounds cool and people seem to like it. Personally I like the title Best Overall for the person who scores highest aggrately in the combined categories.... It sounds appropriate plus people have been using this term for years now.

G

The term "Overall" champion is appropriate, widely accepted, and very likely not to change, because so many people like the system. There are events that ignore soft categories, and just use battle points... but for almost all other events, there will be an "overall" winner accounting for battle points and soft scores.

I definitely prefer it this way... I like going to a tournament to play against gamers who know their rules, have a nice army, and want to have a good time. So I like the "overall" winner, as do most people I know (on Dakka, and irl).

Kilkrazy wrote:IMO the tabletop wargaming hobby is not purely about winning games. You can do that in anything. It is about playing games in an aesthetic environment of nice terrain and models.

That's my perspective. Some people would say it is elitist and exclusionary.

agreed. half the fun for me is seeing my toy soldiers on a table top with scale terrain facing off against the same. lets face it, we technically could play these games with an assorted flavor jar of jelly belly jelly beans with the vanilla ones as tactical marines, the cherry ones as assault marines (the plasma pistol ones would have flavored speckles), etc... the only benefit i see in that is that you could eat the "dead". we don't because it's nice to see the hobby part of the game. and yes, there were people that called that view elitist in the threads suggesting 3 color painting standards in future 'ard boyz.... sad but true.

When we're talking about the effect that any overall tournament scoring change has, the simple truth is that there really isn't a way to definitively and quantifiably find out what effect these changes have on the tournament.

You can poll the attendees of your tournament to ask them about what they thought of the changes but those answers aren't going to obviously include people who didn't attend your event and the reasons they didn't attend. And if you're polling each year, you're going to get a different group of people attending your event each year (for any number of reasons such as inability to raise the money or lack of time to attend, etc) so you're going to get a slightly different pool of responders each year.

The truth is, there is no way to quantify that *having* sportsmanship scores in a tournament actually encourages players to behave more sportsmanslike anymore then you can quantify that removing sportsmanship scores from a tournament would *cause* more unsportsmanlike behavior to occur.

At the end of the day, there is only one person (or group of people) that matter for each individual tournament, and that is the tournament organizer(s). If they believe that having sportsmanship scores helps to promote more sportsmanlike behavior then they're going to include a sportsmanship score in their tournaments. Again, there is nothing quantifiable to concretely say that this accomplishes what they're looking for, but since it is their tournament to run (and our choice whether to attend their event or not) those are the choices they get to make.

It is foolish to try to say that having sportsmanship scores, even something crazy like 60 or 70% of the overall score would somehow completely knock out all unsportsmanlike behavior. Some people just don't care, some people get caught up in the moment and can't control themselves and some people don't even know what sportsmanship even really means. On the flip-side, completely removing sportsmanship scores from a tournament doesn't instantly mean that everyone turns into giant a-holes, or all of the anti-social players will suddenly crawl out of their basements to make everyone's lives miserable. The truth is the vast majority of 40K players are nice people that will play nicely whether there is no sportsmanship score or sportsmanship is 70% of the overall tournament score.

But basic logic dictates that having a score for something in a tournament (provided most people care about winning said tournament) will have *some* effect on the tournament and players' behaviors in said tournament. If your tournament had 'anti-sportsmanship' scores that gave out bonus points for throwing dice across the room in a rage or taunting your opponents to their faces, you can bet that *some* players would attempt to gain these bonus points. Would most players in the tournament suddenly start behaving this way? Probably not, as I do believe most 40K players are good sports and even the inducement of bonus points to act unsportsmanlike wouldn't sway everyone, but the point is that SOME players would behave this way when they wouldn't likely have otherwise if those points weren't in play.

And that's the truth here...sportsmanship, painting, composition (soft scores), have *some* effect on players' behavior at tournaments. Exactly how much or how little is ultimately impossible to know, but it is daft to assume that they don't have any affect at all.

Because of this, a tournament organizer who wishes to emphasize these things in his tournament will utilize them, as that is the kind of tournament that he/she is looking to run. And tournaments are almost always a labor of love that require an insane amount of time, money and energy to run on a large scale, so by all means a tournament organizer can (and will) run the tournament they want to.

I am glad for events like the 'ard boyz and the UKGTs exist, as they show that non-soft score events can exist and the sky doesn't fall. I hope that more tournament organizers run events like this because I really think the best possible scenario for all of us is for there to be enough different types of events that every player has a wide selection of events to choose from, and they can therefore only attend the types that they enjoy.

But ultimately for the independent tournament organizer it comes down to the type of event that they like to run and that's never going to change because of the amount of time, money and energy it takes to run an event, why would anyone really run something they didn't like themselves?

I personally don't begrudge players like Danny Internets *at all*. He represents a type of player who feels that his preferred tournament type is under represented and he's trying to (passionately) convince each and every tournament organizer to see their point of view when choosing how to run their tournament. Obviously tournament organizers need to consider that this type of player exists and may not be attending their tournaments (because they only want to play in 'battle point only' events), and they may want to think about possibly changing their event, especially if you run several tournaments a year...perhaps one of these can be converted to a 'battle points only' event as a test to see how you enjoy it.

But conversely, players like Danny also need to accept that there are many, many people who are diametrically opposed to their viewpoint, including many (if not most) of the people who take the time to organize tournaments. Just because an event *has* soft scores doesn't mean it is any less 'competitive', it just means it is competitive in a style that you don't care for, which it totally understandable. So make your pleas heard, but know that ultimately the way in which *that* tournament organizer likes his tournament to be run is the way it is going to be run regardless of how often or loudly you make your points known. Yes, removing paint scores from the overall champion score of a tournament may not cause *all* armies to show up looking like crap, but that there will be some cases where players with incredibly nice armies don't bother showing up or players don't take the time (or money) to bring as nice an army as they would have. These things can and will happen just as much as you (and others who feel the same) will choose to boycott an event that includes such 'soft scores'.

Again, at the end of the day the best possible scenario would be to have every type of tournament conceivable equally represented so that players have the choice of which type to attend. But sadly the only way to help that vision along is to get out there and help put on an event that you love and if gets popular enough other people will copy you and run similar events. And this doesn't mean you have to create the event yourself! Find an event that is what you like and then volunteer to help them out. That's what I did with Adepticon. I attended one year and loved it so much I started helping out even though I live in California!


Okay, all done with my treatise! Sorry for the length.

I have to agree wholeheartedly with your "treatise," Yak.

As I've mentioned on other threads, those players who feel that non-soft score events are under represented are free to create their own battle-point only tournaments any time they want.

I've even volunteered to help if they're in the Atlanta area, because I agree that there needs to be more of this type of event to cater to those who like them.

I just get annoyed when people try to tell me that I am somehow "wrong" for preferring soft scores in tournaments I attend.

I think it's great to point out that those arguing for "battle points only" events have a very valid viewpoint, and should be encouraged to help out / promote / even just attend those events.

The NOVA Open posted below is a great example of something like this (not BP only, but more geared in that direction)

Black Blow Fly wrote:I typically hand out the title Warmaster to the person who wins hte best general award at my GTs. I think it sounds cool and people seem to like it. Personally I like the title Best Overall for the person who scores highest aggrately in the combined categories.... It sounds appropriate plus people have been using this term for years now.

G

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